


long enough (and just so long)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [257]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Ambiguous Relationships, Bigotry & Prejudice, Gen, Mithrim, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but we're getting past that timeline, set on the second day of Maedhros' waking, title from e.e. cummings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25050478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: What does it mean, to have one’s real name live also in the minds of other people?She used to know.
Relationships: Arien & Amlach, Arien & Gwindor, Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Arien & Original Female Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [257]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	long enough (and just so long)

Mithrim is its own world.

There were, before their coming, no more than thirty men and women in the place. They seem to know each other well; to be united not by threat but by a common bond.

Such bonds are hard to break, even if one only wishes to break through and be admitted.

With so much to do for Russandol (while he slept) and for the children, Estrela ought not to worry over her place here. But she hangs back when they dine, when they speak to Fingolfin's family, and she winces when laughter rises. Others may be grateful, for laughter, but what mirth lived in Gothmog’s camp belonged most often to hard-voiced men.

The stable last night, like her old quarters, was an escape. As she minds Sticks and Frog over their breakfast rations, she is thrust under curious eyes, and is reminded how much bravery she lacks in daylight.

_Estrela...a star..._

She never told them her name, _there_ , and she is left to wonder now whether she spoke it too early, seeing as she is still surrounded by strangers.

What does it mean, to have one’s real name live also in the minds of other people?

She used to know.

Ignoring the murmur, and the few women there are, none of whom look or speak like her, she eats an apple and a cold biscuit. The children eat several apples, and as many biscuits, layered with bits of salt pork. Their eyes are eager and morning-bright; their hands fast-flying. They slept soundly, in the warm hay, and while they slept, Estrela coveted them with a sense of new peace, that belonged outside of herself, rather than within her breast.

 _They_ were safe, now. _They_ needed no escape. The old fear was—it was only a fear, after all. Not a certainty.

But for her, there are new fears.

One of the women is looking at her when she raises her eye again. Sandy-haired, sharp-faced. Unfriendly. The rest are not unfriendly, exactly, for all that they are unknown. Estrela cowers from the woman's gaze, and hates herself for cowering. Gothmog hated her like that: he demanded fear, but did not respect it.

It is true, however, that he hated bravery, too. 

Thinking of Russandol's bravery will steal both breath and appetite from her, so she turns her thoughts to sweet Maria, and is lonely for her old friends. In this way, she is distracted, until Sticks jabs at her with an elbow.

“That father-man is looking at you,” Sticks says, around a mouthful of crumbs. She means Fingolfin, who has appeared in the hall. Appeared, or been here for some time, Estrela does not know. She can guess where he has been, though. With whom he has been. She tries to meet his gaze now and thinks only,

_How ugly I am._

Distractions.

“Fingolfin,” she manages to say, when he approaches. “Good day to you.”

“And to you,” he says. “Hello, Sticks. Frog.” This very gravely; he has the well-worn awkwardness of a man who has known children a long time but still doubts his place among them.

That is like Gwindor. This, too, is a good man. He is trying—not only his best. He is trying everything.

“Say good day,” she murmurs. Frog, surprisingly, obeys first, and speaks his greeting clearly. He has become bold, since Russandol’s return, with new words leaping up at times of his own choosing.

“Gwindor will come to you shortly. I wanted to be certain that all was well, here, before I retreated to Maedhros again.”

Maedhros is shielded, now. Estrela is out in her free world. Is that not what she thought they both wanted? But no—she thought that was what they both would want in death. She does not want to live long under gazes like that woman's. To her, Estrela is a creature. Given a creature, the woman and others like her must make a choice—a choice between horror and amusement.

One is easier than the other, if less true.

Estrela wants to ask Fingolfin a thousand questions, but her mouth will not obey. She is like Frog used to be—secret Amlach—half-named and outwardly silent.

She nods instead. His duty done, Fingolfin steps away, and the moment in which she could have learned news of Russandol is lost. Across the room, the watching woman's sandy hair switches over her shoulders in a long, dull braid. Estrela wonders if she knew Russandol. If she did, she knew him when he was whole.

He lived here, before death was very near. Moved through these halls. Broke bread with men who were twice his own age, and more than twice his brothers’. She is certain that his brothers occupied his most precious time, however. That they admired him, and, in the way that children do, unintentionally kept him safe.

She feels so lost, knowing that they and he are here again together.

With full stomachs, Sticks and Frog are content to frolic a little in one corner of the straw-and-rush-strewn floor. Beren is soon with them, joining in their games. There are no other children in Mithrim, and curious eyes follow them accordingly. Estrela, though watchful for their safety, knows that they do not need her at present. She is thus relegated to further obscurity—to the horror, the silence—before Gwindor finds her.

“Can I speak with you?”

“Of course.”

She has missed him more than her other friends.

He says, “Alone, I mean.”

 _I am alone_. But she follows him away from the scattered throng. In the courtyard, behind the wall, Gwindor says,

“You should see him.”

Estrela…

Saudade _is the word. It cannot be translated: cannot be taken from its home. It means so many things. Love and longing. The protectiveness of loss: its cultivation. The way an eye for an eye is not love, but a heart for a heart is._

“Come, friend,” she murmurs. “Do not pity me. You never pitied me, there.”

“What?” Gwindor is at once affronted, and a little awkward—he has less to hide behind when they are not always in hiding. “I’m not—”

“Russandol doesn’t want to see me,” Estrela says, so that he does not have to. “I am a reminder of everything that hurt him. Every _one_ who hurt him. Let him be with his family…with you. The people who made him strong.”

Gwindor sputters. “Nonsense, the lot! You’re his friend.”

“I’m—” Her whole body trembles, at that, a leaf-in-the-wind shiver of what the world might mean. “Gwindor, please. Don’t ask me to cause him more pain.”

“Bring the children. He’ll want to see the children.”

“Can’t they go with _you_?”

Gwindor narrows his eyes. “Sticks won’t abide _that_.”

“Truly? I thought she…” _She has changed. Frog has changed. We should call him Amlach, now. You are free, and Russandol is safe, and I—_

_I—_

“Estrela.” He says her name too forcefully for it to sound natural, yet. She wonders what her name looks like in Gwindor’s mind—but then, of course. Of course it must look the same. He only knows her, disfigured, and he can only see her as what he knows. Belle and Estrela will meld together, for him.

Not ungenerously; Gwindor is not ungenerous.

“Listen to me.” He lowers his voice as he says that, because one of Fingolfin’s sons—Turgon—has come out of the fort and passes by not far from them.

To be sure…who would listen to the hushed agonies of former slaves? Estrela wonders, but she knows better than to be incautious.

“I am listening,” she mutters.

“He drove himself half mad, for the sake of you,” Gwindor says. “Wild with worry, he was. Worked himself day and night. ‘Course there was talk about our plan, yes, _our plan_ —but it could have gone on without you, if he were the sort to leave people behind. He wasn’t. And he isn’t. And when the camp was burning and we’d gotten you out—half dead, _you_ were—he wanted to know where you were. He’d just come from hell itself, and he wanted to know! Lem died there, Bel—Estrela. And Red grieved him, him who had never done Red much kindness in life. You think a heart like that doesn’t want to see you? Doesn’t want to know, know and be _glad_ , that you’re all right? Oh, Belle—Estrela. He’ll be powerful glad.”

Her eye burned and the place where the eye had been ached. Estrela swipes at her tears. She is Frog-silent again, Frog of the old days, her baby.

So she only nods.

“We’re going to see Russandol— _waked_ Russandol?” Sticks is beaming from ear to ear; her almost snow-pale plaits seem to rise with her glee. Wachiwi must have done her hair; Estrela must remember to thank her, for that. For now, she must remember not to faint. To run.

To weep again.

Inside the sickroom, with its window and jumbled furnishings and its theater of occupants, Russandol is the least remarkable fixture of the whole place.

He is also all that Estrela can see. She lets the children run to him—they each take a side of the bed. Frog says,

“ _Russandol_ ,” very proudly, and his small, triumphant greeting shifts the gaze of all in a tender reprieve. Estrela can hang back, unseen, like this. Estrela can look, without shame, on something she already knows, and grieve it again, a little.

(His handless arm, on Frog’s side of the bed, holding itself very still.)

“You’re talking, then?” asks Russandol. Quiet. Soft.

“Yes,” says Frog. “Sticks showed me how.”

“So you knew, then,” Sticks interjects, accusing so she doesn’t have to do anything else, Estrela suspects. “Could talk that all time, what with me telling stories, and just _didn’t_?”

“He’s a watcher,” Gwindor says.

“I’m a _cano_ ,” Frog answers.

The whole room changes again. One of Russandol’s brothers is here: the rough, tall one, lounging on the floor. Fingolfin is seated with a book in his hands, keeping quiet. Fingon is lately risen from another chair, and he watched the children with a smile, until now.

Now, he asks, too quickly for comfort, “ _Cano_?”

The brother’s boot twitches. His face stays still.

“Just a game,” Russandol says, fixing his beautiful eyes on his cousin. “Wasn’t it always a game?”

(She…is here, and sees his face again. The bruises less noticeable when the muscles are moving. His eyes, the eyes she met in dreams and waking. She came into this room reluctantly, as a leper would go to be healed without much hope of being loved thereafter, and now she must reveal Russandol to herself in parts, without burdening him in the process.)

“A game,” Sticks agrees, finding her tongue. “To keep us warm and moving, when it was so cold. Remember, Frog? It was cold. But Beren’s given you shoes now—shoes! And you _lost_ them. What do you think of _that_ , Russandol? Frog lost ‘em.”

“There are a good deal of shoes in the world, Sticks,” says Russandol, with a pinch of anguish in his forehead, but nothing particular in his voice. “Frog, you’ve grown. I’m sure of it.”

Frog shakes his head. “Haven’t.”

“Aw, he hasn’t,” Sticks agrees. “How could he? People don’t stretch in a day, save you, Russandol. You’re so tall—” She pauses. Hesitates. “Are you still tall?”

He nods. “Far as I know.”

There’s something else in his voice, now. Maybe the brother on the floor hears it too; he harrumphs under his breath. Frog jolts, startled, and snaps his head towards him.

“Sorry,” Sticks whispers.

Breaking. This is how it begins breaking. Fingon has retreated to a corner of the room.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Russandol answers. Not a whisper. Something else.

“You’re fussing him,” Gwindor interrupts. “Come on, now. You paid your dues.”

Fingolfin puts his book down. “Maedhros, the rest of us can clear out. Give you time.”

Silence from the brother. A long, wavering breath from Fingon. All that, from _cano_? Or from the fact that none of them understand Russandol any longer?

_I know you, I know you, I know you._

And of course: this is why she ought not have come. Not because she is afraid, but because she is selfish. In her ugliness, she will claim him. She will feast on the ruins of him, monster that she is.

To spare him— _that—_ she turns. Leaving the children, and the brother and cousin who love him and are hurt by him, an the uncle who seems to understand what is right, always, to do.

Then he calls her name.

Wachiwi lent her trousers, and Aredhel a fresh blouse. They are both slim women, not starved. They are _strong_. As such, the garments hang from Estrela’s bones like sloughing skin. It comes as no surprise that she is incapable of reclaiming any beauty, except that of both her names.

(One a mockery, and one not. One eye, and one not. One hand, and one...)

 _Estrela_ , Russandol says, just as he has said it when she is lost to the world—only this time, in living time, they are not alone. _Wait._

She is grateful for the children, after. She picks at the seams of the trousers, the hem of the blouse, with scarcely moving fingers. She keeps her head down, while Sticks finds a new thread of conversation and stitches the room together again.

“Your brother showed us cats,” she announces. “I’ll give him that much.”

“Red,” Frog says. “Little Red.”

“Amras,” Russandol agrees. “Is that true, Celegorm? He’s found a cat?”

“Cat and kittens.” Celegorm—the brother who is here—shakes his head. “I thought Huan had eaten the lot by now. Soft-hearted.”

Sticks glares fiercely at him. Sticks, clean and fed for the first time in her fraught life, seems very ready to be unafraid.

(What is that like?)

“Kittens,” Frog says distinctly, ignoring Celegorm’s attempt at a threat. “Kittens for us.” He looks pleased, then, his baby smile a soft shadow of his mother’s, and Estrela is torn between being stabbed by memory and reminding herself to caution Fingon against letting Frog smuggle any wriggling kittens into the sickroom.

“Mithrim shan’t have any more rats, then,” Russandol says. His lips twist. “Excellent news. Have you named them?”

“Not yet,” Sticks says. “We’ll let you pick a name, at least. There are _four._ ”

Russandol sighs. “Oh, but that’s a great responsibility.”

The sigh changes things.

“Are you tired?” Fingon asks, tripping over his words. Celegorm broke first, when he spoke of his hound—but it didn’t _sound_ like breaking, because he asked no favor. Fingolfin has held out longest, but when Estrela shifts her gaze up, up (not quite to Russandol), she sees a glance pass between FIngolfin and Gwindor.

_Are you tired? Are you well? Are you yourself?_

_What is your name?_

“Fingon,” Russandol says. _That_ name is so very, very known: Estrela can hear it in his voice.

Hers is a worse secret than knowing or being known…it is, instead, the memory of darkness, crawling, _I do not know who she is._

“You have to say if you’re tired,” Sticks insists, before Fingon can press his question. “Doesn’t he, Frog?”

“Yes,” Frog says. “Go to sleep, Russandol.” Then he leans forward, and whispers, loud enough for them all to hear, “No eyes.”

Belle cannot hear _that_ without being hurt, but at once she recognizes that the wound is not meant for her. It strikes most sharply, perhaps, at Sticks, who snaps, “Don’t—”

“No, no,” Russandol interrupts, strain in the lines of his throat where it wasn’t before. “Sticks, let him be.”

Children can forget one world, remembering another. Even Estrela, blinking her lonely eye, can tell that Sticks no longer sees her, or Gwindor, or Russandol’s kin. Her small, scarred hands clench. Her chin wobbles. She says,

“We should have gone over. We shouldn’t have waited. We shouldn’t have made you wait by the river.”

Gwindor’s breath creaks in his chest. A gasp, that. But the gasp of a man whose body and soul were injured together. No one else speaks.

Then, with his left hand, Russandol reaches for Sticks’ shoulder. It is the most he has moved—chosen to move—since they entered the room. With effort, he answers the plea Sticks made, whether she knew she was making it or not.

“He was already there. It doesn’t matter, now. Nothing you did hurt me, Sticks. _Nothing_.”

“Eyes,” whispers Frog.

Estrela understands.

It isn’t about her pain, and yet it is.

(An eye in a hand with a blade forever between them. A voice in red darkness, _pain_ darkness, asking,

 _Is there anything left of her that you loved?_ )

“Yes,” says Russandol, still looking at Sticks. Looking, most importantly, at nobody else. “Frog’s right. He found us the night before. Really, Sticks. It wouldn’t have mattered, if you crossed the river sooner. You went to Gwindor when you should.”

Sticks begins to cry.

Nightfall bathes the room in shades of blue. Fingon has one oil lamp lit, but its golden circle is small; the light beyond its immediate reach dwindling into shadow. Fingon, for his part, is sleeping. He didn’t mean to. He was sitting with his hands laced together, no doubt preparing some speech for Russandol’s benefit. Because of his descent into slumber, he missed the faint smile that crossed Russandol’s face at the first murmur of a snore.

Estrela and Russandol are thus alone in the room. The rest departed in a varying fashion. Gwindor took the children; Celegorm had left shortly before that, heavy-booted, anger driving him in silence—though anger at what, or whom, it was difficult for a stranger to guess. Fingolfin left in a friendlier manner, when Russandol’s tears were dried.

Yes, Russandol had cried when Sticks did.

Estrela does not unfold all of that recent past, sitting here in the almost-dark. He is looking at her, now, where she sits in Fingolfin’s chair. That is enough to consume her.

 _Estrela can stay with you a while, eh?_ Gwindor asked, and

 _Yes_ , said Russandol. One word, and not much power in it, but it meant almost as much to Estrela as when he’d spoken her real name.

“Do you want me to wake him?”

“No,” Russandol says. “He’s worn, these past….he’s worn.”

 _When was the last time you saw him?_ She can’t ask that. She says nothing.

“He was the first _cano_.” Yes, that must be fondness, now, creeping into him. Filling him with the golden lamplight. Making him beautiful, and thus less hers. (He was never hers.) “A game we played. That’s what the children—that’s what they meant.”

 _Because you were trying to keep them alive_. She twists her still-healing hands, and is guilty over it.

“You can speak, you know,” he says, quieter. Is he afraid that Fingon will hear, and wake, and…see him? She thinks he loves Fingon, and she thinks he does not want Fingon to look at him at all. She can understand that. “If you like. Say whatever you like.”

“Thank you.”

He scoffs softly. “Oh, well, not _that_.”

“I have to.” She swallows against the lump in her throat. “I know what you did for me.”

“I know everything,” he answers, “Even what I don’t remember. Doesn’t do me much good.”

Fingon breathes with a child’s open breathing, in his sleep. Fingon is young. Russandol and Estrela are not allowed to be.

“I am glad the children could see you,” Estrela offers. “They wanted to, so badly, since they knew you were awake. Frog wanted to show you how he talks now, I think.”

“How long has he been talking?”

“Since you came back.” She worries that that, too, will hurt him.

He shifts a little in the bed. Estrela’s skin prickles with the cold, but also with anticipation. She should leave him now; let _him_ sleep. But he asked her to come and he said she should stay.

“It’s a pretty name,” he says, finally. His left—his only hand, moves over the coverlet absently. Just a twitch of the fingers. When he is quiet, he is perfectly still; it must be his purpose. But when he is talking, or perhaps when he is very tired, as he must be now, very tired and so close to being alone and unwatched (only one eye in the dusk)—

He adds, “More Portuguese than Belle.”

The cold leaves her. “Belle wasn’t my choice.”

“But you didn’t fight it.”

“Oh, no. You were there. What good—”

“Would it have done? Of course. I should have said, you protected _Estrela_ from what Belle had to be. If only I’d had the damnable foresight.” A choked laugh follows _that_.

She doesn’t dig in that grave. Instead, she asks, “What name do you like now? Should I call you—Maedhros?”

She doesn’t ask about _Maitimo_. Fingon calls him that. So did Bauglir.

“Russandol is…better. Sticks chose it for me. She’s a worthy little prophet, even if the meaning doesn’t suit.”

“Russandol, then.” She is relieved, by this. She knows what it means, and knows that it suits him, but she shan’t argue with him.

“‘Course, can’t ask my brothers to call me by it. A new name. You’ve met them, haven’t you? All my brothers?”

“There are a good many.”

“Do you think so?” Sharp pain, there. She has said something wrong.

“I don’t think I’ve met all of them,” she concedes, humbly. “Celegorm, Amras, I know. I’ve seen some of the others.”

“I haven’t seen them all, myself.” He is talking to her, but he isn’t. She knows the anguished twist of a voice that speaks to itself. “It’s justice. It’s all justice. God—Estrela—why must justice run so slow?”

“I don’t think it’s justice.”

“Don’t answer, then. It isn’t fair to ask you. It _isn’t_ justice, for you.”

“Russandol…” She struggles over how, exactly, to put it. Fingon stirs in his chair, his head lolling so that the shadow of his hair moves over his shoulders. “None of it. None of it should have happened to you.”

Silence. Breath. All three of them, breathing. Fingon rests, and Russandol may never rest.

“Estrela,” he says. “We’ve named enough, for now.”

Then Fingon wakes. 


End file.
